I'm thinking about start a business (more than one, actually), and I'm mainly just looking for motivation at this point. Has anyone started one from scratch and had success? I have a few ideas that may work, but I kinda want to keep the good ones to myself for now. One is a shirt design business (custom t-shirts, college apparel, etc).
Anyone here ever start a business?
- Thread starter Schmoove
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DonFrancisco
Your Favorite Tio!
BE ORGANIZED AND HAVING DETAIL OF YOUR BUSINESS OPERATION IN WRITING.
I say this in caps because I help run a start-up business right after college. It didn't go well because I was a disorganized mess. My biggest thing to you is to plan out everything ahead in time. Don't do too much but the things you do, do it well. Try to make yourself look and act like a corporate business more than a small business. By that I mean, if you have a website or some marketing materials, make them look very professional. If you do events, make your booth very professional. Don't set the bar too high for quality and service, you will just shoot yourself in the foot.
Take it from a guy that failed in his first start-up.
I say this in caps because I help run a start-up business right after college. It didn't go well because I was a disorganized mess. My biggest thing to you is to plan out everything ahead in time. Don't do too much but the things you do, do it well. Try to make yourself look and act like a corporate business more than a small business. By that I mean, if you have a website or some marketing materials, make them look very professional. If you do events, make your booth very professional. Don't set the bar too high for quality and service, you will just shoot yourself in the foot.
Take it from a guy that failed in his first start-up.
starting a business isn't easy. the easiest way to "start" or run a business is to take the moment from family business. the easiest way to get going is to stick to the family business culture. if your family is all law, stick to law. if medicine, stick to medicine. if athletes, sports etc....
Going against the family culture will be slow. especially something like t-shirts which is common. i used to get my shirts printed by these white folks in the township. it was a complete family business. and they grew and rent a nice spot. they have all my designs in their computers. i only wear my shyt. i don't wear name brand shyt. but the last year i ditched them and support this one young black dude to keep the money in black. young dude does the same shyt but he's decades behind the white folks that used to do my shyt. the white folks previous have huge accounts. the young dude now gets white folk work too. but you gotta immerse yourself in it. it's like school. for 2-3-4 years you're just doing it to do it but all that work will pay off once the money starts coming in. even when money comes in you still gotta keep on working. anyone can make a quick $1,2 3 thousand profit. but consistently making profit and charging a loss to the game and moving on is hard.. your family or people or woman has to be in it with you. or a sucka. not nice to call them suckas but that's what they are if they aren't family.
if you ain't working on your own business or for family without a real exist strategy to come up, you're just really a sucka.
Planning. 5 year plan. How much does it cost to start the business? How much are expenses every month? How much income do you expect and why?
I took business management with a specialty in entrepreneurship, which is kind of ironic because I'm too careful to take a huge risk as starting a business from the ground up so I'm going to blow hot air up your booty.
You need a business plan. Don't know how to create one? Go to https://www.sba.gov/writing-business-plan
Just because you have a "great" business idea, it can fail with a poor business plan. You need a business plan to get bank financing. You need a business plan to get venture capital (asking rich dudes for a loan, like Shark Tank). These guys are pretty shrewd and won't give you a loan with either a bad business idea and/or business plan.
You cannot assume people are going to want to buy your product or service. Some entrepreneurs get very narrow-minded thinking "everyone" is going to want to buy their product or service. Then, when they roll out their business, there's like a 2% interest by the public. Market research is a good way to gauge interest. You find out who your target market is, e.g. Males from 18 to 50. You create a survey. Would you buy product A? Would you buy product A if it cost $x? Would you buy product A monthly if it cost $z? If you find out only 5% of the survey will buy your product, you can change the pricing structure, you can change the product, you can change where you market your product. No one in Florida is going to buy snowmobile-related t-shirts, but it would sell much better in northern states, that's just an example. Or maybe your product just plain sucks, e.g. remanufactured Fleshlights.
Maybe your product or service is great, but the business model sucks. They come up with product A or service A. It sells like crazy when they roll it out. But their profit margin is too low to sustain the business beyond 2 years. How are they going to pay back their loans after year two? Banks care about that.
